Researchers from Universiti Teknologi MARA conducted a study on the mangrove ecosystem to discover actinomycetes. The mangrove ecosystem is known as a highly productive habitat for isolating actinomycetes which has the potential of producing biologically active secondary metabolites.

The study focussed on eight different mangrove sites in Malaysia which were chosen at random to isolate and screen actinomycetes from soil samples. A total of 53 putative marine actinomycetes were isolated and it was discovered that a three percent final concentration of sodium chloride (NaCl) was sufficient to support the growth of marine actinomycetes. Among the isolated filamentous bacteria, five isolates showed antimicrobial activity from direct culture broth against at least one of the test organism. Meanwhile, four extracts of ethyl acetate showed activity against Gram-positive test organisms. However, hexane extracts exhibited no antimicrobial activity. The antimicrobial activity was screened by a modified microtiter plate method using resazurin as an indicator. This modern technique helped in screening more samples with easy handling and provided faster results. The results revealed that marine actinomycetes is a potential source to produce antibiotics.